Module 5
As I was going through the different readings for the week I realized that many of them had something in common. Many of them talk about how different people have power over what is shown in the media and what is going to advertised. These are companies such as corporate companies that have the money to show what every day people see. Robert McChesney pointed out to us that when the corporate companies are closer to the story that is being shown, it probably means that the story is unreliable (p. 375). This is a sad truth because as we watch news programs or anything on television, we should not have to think to ourselves if the story is true or not. I feel as though for it to be on television it should have to be true or have a reliable source behind it. Normal people do not know this as being a problem, so they just figure that what they are hearing is true. If a person only gets their information from the media, then we can see how this is a problem, since much of it could be false.
These news companies put a lot of different factors into what is going to make a good story and what stories are going to take the least amount of time and effort to cover. As Radford showed us in his article, news companies only show stories based on competing stories, the amount of time it will take and where it is taking place (p. 67). This makes me mad because I feel as though the news is there to show us all the important things happening in the world. Knowing that these companies are just showing us things because they are easy to cover and the other stations are also showing it, is irritating. For many people, this is the only way that they see any news and what is going on around them. If they knew that they may not be getting the most important news stories, I would think that they would be mad and have other ways of finding the news. Many people do not realize that these news stations are still companies that are out to make a profit.
Just like the people that are creating the media and news stories we should also look at the people that are watching it. In the article on fair.org, we see the people who are viewing the news outlets the most. We saw from this article that mostly whites watched these programs, and among them, they were mostly male compared to females (Hart, web). It was not by a little bit that men outnumbered women in watching these programs either, they were way over 60% every time. Thinking of these statistics in this article I was pretty surprised with it. As I thought of my own family and friends I would have thought that there would have been more of a similarity between men and women watching these news outlets. Such as my family, my mother and I watch the news way more than my father and brother. If I had to think from my sociology background though, I would think this is true because men are still more likely to have higher paying jobs. These jobs need these men to stay in tuned with what is happening around the world.
Turning to our text, Sternheimer starts to look at consumption and materialism as a problem in our society. We see how materialism is the new craze among the younger generation. Anytime something brand new comes out, they must have it or else they are going to be uncool. We have started to look at material needs as a necessity and not a luxury. The younger generation has become more obsessed with money than happiness, as the majority of them say they would be happier if they had more money to be able to buy themselves more things (Sternheimer, p. 246). This is extremely sad because this means that they will never truly be happy with what they have because newer and better things are always being made. This is especially sad for the parents of these children because they are unable to always buy the latest and greatest for their kids. In the long run this causes people to work more often to be able to buy all of these things and so then give the children “guilt money” since they are never around (p. 250). There are so many things that we can blame this on, such as the media and advertisements. They are always the ones showing these children that they must have the best new thing. Advertisements many times target the younger generation because they know these children can talk their parents into almost buying them anything. This is a big loop that can only be stopped by parents telling their children no.
One thing that the media often hides from us as Americans is just how many children here in our own country are living in poverty. We always see the commercials for the starving children in other counties (which is great) but we never see any for the children actually living here (Sternheimer, p.275). Most of the people living in poverty in the United States are children, more specifically about 15 million. It is a ridiculous amount in which the media never sheds light on. If we have such a big problem of children living in poverty, why are news outlets or the media in general letting other Americans know about the problem? I feel as though if more people saw this as a problem, then we would be able to as a society, fix it together. Many people probably do not see this as a problem though, because they simply never hear anything about it. This takes us back to the stories in which the media actually tells us about. A better question is though, why do we not see these children that are living in poverty in our own country as a problem? Why do the news outlets not think that this is a problem that they should share with us? Sternheimer bring us a good point however, when we look at poverty, instead of blaming other people, the only people that we blame are the poor themselves (p.282). This may just be the main reason as to why we never see these stories in the news. Although, I do feel as though if we as a society stepped in we could help these people get out of poverty and be able to provide for their families. The United States is always so quick to blame others for our problems, when in fact I think we should stop blaming people and just help to fix the problems.
